'LA DIADA' WITH THE CATALAN COMMUNITY IN AUCKLAND

Defenders of Barcelona, 1714

September 11 is the Catalan National Day, la Diada. The Grandma and her friends want to celebrate this important day with the Catalan Community in Auckland. 

In New Zealand, there are four Catalan Communities: Auckland, Christchurch, Tauranga and Wellington. All of them are formed by Catalan expatriats and New Zealanders who are interested in Catalan culture.

Today, The Grandma has left her studies to celebrate this important day that is a symbol of resistance, resilience and survivence of a nation which has fought and fights nowadays to conserve its identity, its culture and its lifestyle and wants to be recognized as it deserves.

Talking about the War of Succession is an extensed activity but The Grandma wants to remember two special events that affected Catalan population directly: the Betrayal of England and the Siege of Barcelona, where the population defended the city against the Bourbon troops until the end under the cry of We will live free or we will die.

Thousands of citizens were killed by the Bourbon troops. The Bourbon's repression under the population was cruel and inhumane and nowadays it's considered as a crime against Humanity, a crime against a Civil Population which resisted as time as they could and which used the memory and the oral tradition as a way to keep their culture and the story of the events from generation to generation.

In homage to all those brave citizens who resisted in every place of the nation, from Xàtiva to Barcelona, from Talamanca to Lleida, from Sant Boi de Llobregat to Girona, from Mallorca to Reus, we want to wish you a great Diada remembering that Freedom and Democracy are the most important treasures in a contemporany society.

Long Live Catalonia!

We will live free or we will die.

Catalan motto